By the Light of My Father's Smile (23 page)

Susannah lay back against the deck chair, sighing, feeling exhausted.

I still don't see the connection between Pauline and Magdalena, she said, queasily. Even the idea of them having something in common caused her to feel slightly incestuous. She thought she must soon heave herself from the deck chair, reel over to the boat's railing, and throw up.

Here, said Irene, seeing her go green around the gills, have this leaf of mint to chew.

The very thing they hated you for having, said Irene, they both tried to steal from you.

My childhood?

Yes, said Irene. But beyond that, your placid happiness itself.

Argh! said Susannah, flinging herself up from her chair and off, at a lurch, toward the sea.

You are on a boat! Up very high! Irene called after her. Don't forget!

Susannah had forgotten, actually.

Now she leaned, gagging, over the railing, caught by it, held by it, kept by it from falling perhaps to her death. And kept from falling as well by the voice of Irene. Her odd little
watti-tuu
, angel, come to life.

But I wanted them to have happiness, too! she wailed, as she sank to her knees and a level that permitted her large head to rest in Irene's small arms. Why couldn't they see that, and leave mine alone!

You were born with yours, and somehow managed to keep it, said Irene, softly. That is why to others it appeared you never rebelled. Even going against the grain made you happy. Being naughty and even being punished for it made you smile! This is sometimes enough to make an enemy of anyone.

What? asked Susannah, who hadn't heard.

Irene flipped the nub of her cigar through the railing and into the sea. Then very carefully she dried Susannah's tears with a bit of the sleeve of her nubby white linen cardigan.

I said, Fuck them, she said.

And yet, inexplicably, in the very next morning's post, rowed out to Irene's yacht in a decrepit dinghy whose oars creaked with an ancient sound, there was a large, carefully wrapped parcel from Pauline. Susannah unwrapped it slowly, with hesitation and distrust at what she would find, and then stared in amazement at a clear gallon-size plastic jar filled to the brim with green-apple jellybeans.

It is time, Señor.

Manuelito had come back and had been observing me as I practiced the last stanza of the Mundo initiation song.

Are you ready? he asked.

Ah, Manuelito, I said, opening my arms to embrace him. How radiant you look! Even more than you did before. I am ready, I said, with your help.

He smiled.

Did everything go well, where you were? I asked.

Everything went very well, Señor. The young woman I harmed is freed to do the work of her own two tasks.

But she was just a child when the harm was done to her, I said, surely she can't be blamed for whatever hurt she caused others later on.

It does not seem to work that way, Señor. It seems we are responsible for everything we do, no matter how the chain of events began.

But is this right? I asked. Is it fair?

Manuelito shrugged.

We were standing now on the side of a mountain, looking out over a valley. Sweeping down the hillside and into the valley, through which a glinting river flowed, there were millions of blue wildflowers. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and I recognized it at once.

We are back in the mountains! I cried.

Yes, said Manuelito.

Your homeland!

Yes, he said again.

Are we near my old house? I asked, turning to scan the area.

No, Señor, not near your house, but near mine. Mine and Magdalena's.

Yours, I stammered, and Magdalena's!

Sí
, he said.

I looked all around. There was no house.

It is here, he said, with humble pride, stepping behind a bush and into a cave.

It was a tiny space. An old blanket lay on the floor. A large clay pot with a lid stood beside a rock. The floor was smooth as if freshly swept. Through the branches of the shrub that guarded the door I looked out into a dazzling drift of blue flowers that
grew so densely that by the time they reached the valley and spread across it they appeared to have turned into the sea.

Yes, said Manuelito. When Magdalena and I used to be here we would look out, just as you are doing, and imagine floating away on a big boat.

This is a part of the ceremony? I asked.

Yes, said Manuelito. The week or so before the marriage of their children, the Mundo believe it is right for the young man to invite the young woman's father into the space that will be her home. It is important that he see what view she will have, so that he can imagine the growing spaciousness of her heart; it is important that he see where she will live; where she will be loved; where she will lie.

And her mother? I asked.

That ceremony comes even earlier; it would have happened the week before. You can see that the women have already been here. The floor is swept, there is water in the water jar. The blanket is spread out on the floor. You and I will gather firewood and find food. Or you and I would have done so, he said.

Manuelito cleared his throat.

Is it satisfactory to you, Señor? he asked.

Years ago, of course, it would not have been. This hovel, I would have scoffed. This
cave?

It is perfect, my son, I said.

If it is okay, he said, we can begin.

From a distance I could see something, someone moving. Nearer, I saw it was a woman, riding a black horse. Nearer still, I saw that it was Magdalena. Not Magdalena the twisted, Magdalena the furious and obese, Magdalena the grotesque. But Magdalena as she
was before she began to eat so much. Magdalena the tall and supple, Magdalena the self-possessed, both willful and serene. She was incredibly beautiful; and I was shocked to think I'd never really noticed this. Her skin was very dark, the color, truly, of chocolate. Bittersweet. Her eyes very large and daring; her “big” head of hair wild as the wind. She was wearing a low-cut, very white blouse; her full green skirt was hitched up so that her thighs gleamed in the sun. It was as if I had never seen her ride before; she and the horse were one.

For a long time I watched her approach, moving very fast, but arriving very slowly.

I looked at Manuelito, whose eyes were devoted solely to the approach of my daughter, his whole face shining with love. So bright was his whole being that I felt almost burned by it, and had to look away.

There is something that I think I forgot to tell you, Señor, he said.

What is that? I asked.

It is about the five places that are kissed.

Yes? I said.

There are actually more than that. Seeing Magdalena made me remember them.

What are they? I asked.

They are the palms of the hands, because our hands serve us faithfully always. And our feet, because they carry us to our destiny. They are kissed on the arch, he added. He looked caressingly toward my daughter thundering toward us on her black horse, deliberately arriving in slow motion, I realized, for his, and her, enjoyment of the moment. It was taking so long I thought I'd make a joke.

Will she ever actually get here? I asked.

Manuelito laughed.

Not before you are ready, he said, soberly.

I'm ready, I said.

No, he said. I also forgot to explain one other thing. And that is about the light.

The light? I asked. Looking about me and realizing there was a lot of it.

Yes, he said. Remember how we kiss all the places that let in the light? And remember how you didn't understand about the moon?

Moonlight, I said. I got it.

No, Señor, that is not quite it.

I don't got it? I said, jokingly.

No. And it is a rather long story, now that I think of it.

My daughter looks pretty eager to be here, I said.

She is eager to be here, to be with me and with you. But she will not come before we're ready. Please, he said, help me not to fail at my job.

Okay, I said.

In the first place, he said, you should know that my mother and father have already welcomed Magdalena, so she is really coming home. She has been kissed everywhere with much tenderness; her breasts have been blessed. This would have been done when the moon was full, and my father's part would have been done after the kissing and the blessing. But my mother's part would have involved telling Magdalena the story of woman and the moon. Of how woman is connected to it and shares its rhythms. That a woman's tides, her blood tides, connect with the moon. That this is how women know in their bodies that they are a part of everything, even something so distant as the moon.

But how are men to know this? asked Manuelito, looking pensively at me.

It was my turn to shrug.

The Mundo thought long about this question, he said. And they studied the sky for a sign that they, those who were men, were connected also. You know how much we hate to be left out! He laughed.

Why do you laugh? I asked.

Because it was right there all the time!

What? I asked.

The moon! he said. The very same moon. Finally, after who knows how many millennia, they got it. And this, Manuelito said, still smiling, is what they finally got. A woman, living in nature, is full when the moon is full, no? And if a lot of women live together, they and the moon are full at the same time; when the moon releases and begins to wane, that is when they release their blood. It is powerful, this connection, no? Now, during this time, a man may not make love to a woman. She feels somewhat irritable, somewhat messy, though she does not mind, since she and the moon are sharing, as they say, a big moment. But for sure there is a period in there when woman just naturally does not want to be bothered! I remember that my mother, during such times, would actually throw things at my father!

Ah, Manuelito, I said with regret, what an idiot I feel not to have really gotten to know them.

Señora Robinson knew them, he said. She and my mother were rather alike. Anyway, he said, there is a period of recovery from the “big moment” that women have had with the moon, when men are unsure how or whether they will be received; then there is a period when sexual contact must be avoided unless one wants children, and every Mundo person knows we cannot support very many. We love to make love, though, so we are somewhat gloomy during this time. Manuelito pantomimed this condition, the corners of his mouth turned down. Then, he said, there is the dark
of the moon, when not a whole lot is happening
either
! But
then
, he said, brightening, just when the men have given up hope, the moon appears again. And in our eyes, it appears as a smile! Very tentative at first, but pretty soon, a wide grin! For by now the women are totally receptive. It is a good time to make love!

Manuelito laughed merrily. We are so relieved, Señor! And this, the Mundo believe, is man's connection to the moon. The crescent moon, which is sometimes like a bowl or a boat, is the moon smiling its light on the good lovemaking that is to come! The moon, while forever a woman, for just a little while becomes, also, a man! (That is why, when you spoke to us about a man in the moon, it was not a foreign concept.)

If you are in love, and going to meet your lover, to make love, you think of the moon as a father, happily looking down on you. For Mundo fathers
are
happy that their children, the girls as well as the boys, enjoy what your culture calls sex. And that is why a young girl sings, as she goes to her lover, just as does a young boy: “by the light of my father's smile!” And that is why no one among the Mundo would marry when the moon is full, but only when it has waned and then reappears, as a smile in a dark face, in the sky!

I finally got it. That this was what my poor daughter had been singing about, all those years ago! “Por la luz … por la luz …” I could still hear her despairing cry. There had been an element of pleading in her song that I had ignored. She had been begging me to see, to witness, the light that she had found. To love and bless what she loved. But I had refused. I had brought her to a culture and a people I'd claimed to respect. She had fallen in love with them, and been betrayed when I myself stopped short. When I myself, in her eyes, had regressed.

She had been flying across the mountain slopes on the back of the shining black stallion before us, secure among these “alien”
people, yearning body and soul for the shelter and passion of Manuelito's arms, believing that the moon was with her, and so perhaps her own father might be. But she was, unfortunately, the daughter of a fool. I had failed her and without reason destroyed her life.

Manuelito, I said, I wish I were dead.

Ah, you are now ready, Señor, he said.